By Cori of Peace, Baby! BatiksFinding Nemo is all the rage at my house these days, temporarily bumping Lightning McQueen from most-favored-toy status. We’ve borrowed ocean books from the library, visited aquariums, and pretended we were Nemo and his friends.
So, when I started planning the monthly arts and crafts activity for my MOMS Club, I scoured my Kid Stuff Pinterest board for simple projects related to ocean creatures. I settled on two painting projects: paper bowl jellyfish and paper plate fish.
The jellyfish were inspired by this project from First Palette and this one from Creekside Learning. I told the kids we were making octopuses; as we moved along with the craft, they informed me the octopuses looked more like jellyfish. I went back and looked at the original ideas, and of course, they were right!
We started our jellyfish by painting the bottom of paper bowls. Some kids painted the whole thing; others, like my son, just painted the base of the bowl. I glued googly eyes onto each one. We used tape to attach streamers around the bowl for tentacles.
The fish were inspired by these beautiful paper plate tropical fish from Crafts by Amanda. For the fish, give each kid two paper plates. Have them paint one to be the fish body and help them draw fins on the other plate (or draw them for little guys), and paint those shapes.
When everything is dry, cut out the fins and tape or glue them into place. Draw an eye or attach a googly eye. Too cute!
Here are some other fishy crafts we’ve tried or want to try:
Paper plate octopus, via Artsy Craftsy Mom
Egg carton fish, via Crafty-Crafted. Ours are still a work in progress; we need to add stripes, fins, and eyes.
Squishy fish aquariums, from Teach Preschool (one of my favorite blogs!). We used light blue hair gel and added food coloring to make the gel bluer.
